Charles Simic Reads for the Visiting Writers Series at UMass

Poet Laureate Charles Simic read at the University of Massachusetts this past Thursday, to a packed Fine Arts Center University Gallery. As a guest of the Visiting Writer’s Series, which is sponsored every year by the MFA Program for Poets and Writers and the English Department, Simic has joined the ranks of Pulitzer Prize winners and UMass faculty such as James Tate and Dara Weir. The series is made possible in part by grants from the Amherst Arts Council, UMass Arts Council, and UMass Alumni Association. Local businesses, such as Amherst Books, also support the program.

C'09 SarahNabulsiThe crowd listens attentively to Charles Simic read.
Born in Yugoslavia in 1938, Simic’s written works, which number more than sixty in the U.S. and abroad, contain English, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovenian and French translations. He is also the author of several books of essays, and has edited several anthologies, including an edition of The Best American Poetry in 1992, which is used in classrooms here at UMass.C'09 SarahNabulsiCharles Simic in the middle of his reading.

Simic’s reading, to which he was introduced by Luke Bloomfield, a Juniper Fellow and poet himself and who described Simic’s poetry as “poems that bring out and welcome the voyeur in all of us,” was greeted by the audience with solemnity at some points and laughter at others. Unlike many of the readings that color the literary scene in Amherst, Simic spoke to the crowd between each poem, describing and explaining his inspiration for each. His dry sense of humor and wit kept the crowd engaged. “When I was a kid I guess I was a bad student. I would say the teachers picked on me if I was that kind of a person. They’d make you stand in a corner, and then forget about you. The first hour, an eternity passes. You’re pissed at the teacher, life, yourself. You go into a dreamy state where I don’t know what you do with your brain,” Simic said, before reading a poem entitled “Old Man.” One would never guess English is Simic’s second language. Even speaking, there is poetry in his words, and they flow from him into the air with the same kind of ease one sees in a person deeply asleep. Simic describes his poems as divided between a very small village in New Hampshire and New York City, both places he has been traveling between since 1973. While introducing “Adam and Evey Tanning Salon,” Simic refused to reveal the name of the New Hampshire town that it’s about. “I like the town, but I also feel sorry for it,” Simic said.

To compliment the season, many of the poems Simic read were rather depressing. “I picked poems relating to the time of year. Driving today everything looked so melancholy and sad,” Simic said, before reading his poem “Dead Season.”

Life is a falling dream within a dream
whispered the fallen leaves
below our feet

At the end of the reading, Simic answered questions from the audience. When asked how long it takes him to write a poem: “There is no way to generalize. Some come quickly, others take years. It’s an unpredictable process.” One audience member asked if he still sometimes wished he were unrecognized. “Poetry is something you do secretly. When people ask you what you do and you tell them you’re a poet, they laugh. Tell them anything: a pianist, a painter, a novelist…these are all terrific. Never a poet. It never occurred to me that this would become something I’d do for the rest of my life. I had no idea what I was going to be when I was twenty,” Simic said. Simic also revealed that when he started writing poetry, he did so in English, but that it wasn’t a conscious choice. He refused to classify himself as having a “poetic voice.” “People tell me my early poems have certain qualities that they associate with me, but I can’t step outside of myself to see what they are,” Simic said.

C'09 SarahNabulsiCharles Simic signing books at the end of the reading.

Simic’s candid honesty and sense of humor added a touch of familiarity to his reading. Senior Katlyn Sokarsky, who described one of his books, Lone Wolf, as a message of mystical self-discovery, expressed surprise at his warmth and overall ease when speaking to the audience. “You don’t see many Pulitzer Prize winning poets so down-to-earth as Charles Simic,” Sokarsky said.